Jackson State University student Eyerusalem Woldu has been selected to participate in the United Negro College Fund’s (UNCF) fourth annual HBCU Innovation Summit.
Woldu, who is majoring in computer engineering, has traveled to California with 52 other students and 19 faculty members for the HBCU I.C.E (Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship) summit. The goal of the four-day summit is to empower African-American students to plan their career paths within the STEM fields.
More than 200 students applied for 53 spots, and Woldu was chosen competitively based on GPA, personal statements, internships, computer science skills, and demonstrated leadership.
To kick off the summit on Nov. 16, 2016, more than 30 HBCU’s visited nearly a dozen Silicon Valley/Bay Area corporations such as Adobe, eBay, Google, NetApp, PureStorage, Salesforce, Symantec, Visa and Veritas. These sponsoring corporations expressed their excitement to celebrate the diverse cultures within technology companies.
Gwen McDonald, executive vice-president for human resources at the NetApp Company, stated: “As a proud sponsor of the UNCF HBCU Innovation Summit, NetApp is excited to host the UNCF scholars onsite for the HBCU Tech Trek! Our employees are our greatest assets. We celebrate the diversity of cultures, traditions, perspectives, and experiences that our employees represent. University Relations is focused on providing a diverse pool of university candidates to help drive NetApp’s global talent strategy and ultimately business success.”
Being that African-Americans make up only six percent of the STEM workforce, the summit will also provide a forum to address the gaps in tech diversity that exists in Silicon Valley. The amount of women in the workforce is less than 30 percent according to CNET, but surprisingly the number of women participating in the summit is nearly 40 percent.
On Nov. 18, students will participate in a competition to pitch their startup business to leaders in the tech industry at the Kapor Center for Social Impact, which works primarily with underrepresented groups to pursue creative strategies that leverage information technology for positive social impact.
On the last day of the summit, students will partake in tech empowerment workshops, a career fair and also hear from the 2016 HBCU Innovation Summit scholars Dakari Franklin and Paul Hammond.
The HBCU Innovation Summit has proven its success being that almost a third of the 2014-15 participants are either interning or working full-time at technology companies.
Follow the HBCU ICE Innovation Summit on Twitter @UNCF.